Life and Death

The decision to keep LucyLearnsALot out of school for the next year was not an easy one.  Or one that we even got to make without a degree of coersion.  We felt strongly that she was ready to join her friends in a structured class environment and to learn things beyond what we've been teaching at home, but unfortunately the school system disagreed. 

In short, we live too far away from work to send her to school near our house, but the schools near our work won't even consider taking her.  Faced with this flagrant lack of cooperation, we did what any sane parent would do: we decided to homeschool and built our own curriculum.

Oh, I mean insane.  Insane parents do that.

Sure, parents homeschool all the time.  Parents who are actually home to parent.  Moms and dads that aren't out of the house for about 60 hours every week.  If you think about it mathmatically, though, one week is comprised of 168 hours, so 60 is not really that much.  Who needs sleep anyway, AMIRIGHT?

Over the last month-ish, I've been slowly piecing together a series of lesson plans.  As I go along, I've become more at peace with the idea of teaching her myself, since I like the idea of  an element of exploratory self-guided discovery as a part of a learning agenda.  I am totally ready for this.
Until I got to the first lesson: death.

Lucy like to play roughly with her brother.  She likes to sit on him and put various things around his neck: her hands, cords, blankets, etc.  We have to watch them carefully while they're playing and strip them of anything that can be used as a garrote while they're playing unsupervised.

I'm a lot like a prison guard.  I might put that on my resume.

The other day when Lucy grabbed her little brother by the neck and threw him into the couch, I'd had enough.  She took a nice, long time out and we had a hard discussion about what happens to her brother when she puts her hands around his neck.  It ended when I told her that when her brother can't breathe for too long, then he would go away forever and she would never see him again.  I didn't stop describing the finality of choking her brother until she was bawling.

Later that same night, we were exploring some information that she wanted to know about seahorses.  For some reason, this has become her favorite animal (this week).  One of the videos we watched showed a seahorse having babies.  It was my opportunity to explain to her how the male seahorses are the ones who have babies, which is different from other animals. 

She was so fascinated that she wanted to watch an elephant have a baby too.  And fish.  And bunnies.  And dogs.

We talked a lot that night about how some animals grow babies in their tummies and eventually push them out of their vagina (hiply referred to in my house as the 'gina) and other animals lay eggs that the babies grown in and then hatch from.

Our night of fun ended when she asked, "How you put babies in the mama?"

I bailed on that answer.  I figured I'd already covered life and death in a matter of just a couple of hours.  Sex can wait.

This Is How We Do It

Earlier this evening, ClumsyCathy smashed her finger in a kitchen drawer.

ClumsyCathy: Ow!  Mama my finger is broken!

I inspected the finger and found it to be very not broken.

Awesomeness: Honey, your finger is fine.
ClumsyCathy: But Mama, I broke it.
Awesomeness: You know what happens to broken fingers right?
ClumsyCathy: What?
Awesomeness: We cut them off.  Are you ready?

I'm guessing the answer is no, because she ran away and still won't let me touch her.

You Never Come Over Anymore...

It's a frequent complaint of our childless friends.  I'm sure every parent has heard it at some point.  Beyond the usual tired excuse of it being a big hassle to pack kids up and get them out to someone else's house, there is another reason.  A good one.

Destruction.

There's only so much of it that you can curtail.  I don't care how good a parent you are, kids are kids.  Especially when you consider that there are many different types of destruction.  My kids hit them all at the Superbowl party we went to.

Destruction of Peace

• Terrible twos=terrible tantrums.  I was actually considering taking my son home early on in the visit. Five minutes in the door he started crying like someone kicked his favorite Wonder Pet.  He missed nap time though, and I thought that once he slept for a little while, he'd be just fine.  He did okay until he emptied out a 64-count box of crayons onto the floor and we took them away.  He was hitting his head on the floor (carpeted, doesn't have the same effect as it does at home, where our floors are made of laminate material), kicking everyone that tried to touch him and screaming bloody murder the whole time.  He did this in the middle of the game.

Destruction of Person

• One fat lip for a little girl, courtesy of my son's rock head.
• He got as good as he gave though, as an elbow ended up meeting his face at some point.
• One of our friends is about the right height that, when my son comes barreling around a corner, his rock head catches the friend right in the...rocks.

Destruction of Property

• An unknown quantity of Disney Princess accessories disappeared yesterday.  I know my son ate one princess shoe and attempted to also swallow a ring.  I saved it, but it's mangled now.  Beyond those, I don't have a clue until he passes it all.  I'm sure that we'll have some explaining to do if he poops at school tomorrow.
• A personal journal.  Hope they liked my daughter's pictures of Purple Kangaroo.  On every page.  She did it in pencil, so it was easily erased, but she's a heavy-fisted artist, so you can still see the impressions.
• A pool table.  Remember just a sentence ago, when I said that my girl got ahold of a pencil?  Yeah.  Our friend's pool table has light tan felt covering it.  Now it has some lovely artwork covering it as well.  We worked with our friend to clean it as thoroughly as possible, but the cleaners he had there couldn't get it out.  We took our walk of shame out the door the second the game ended.

Next year, we already have plans to stay home.  I'm sure we won't be invited back anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Hold Still

Tonight I cut my thumb while preparing dinner.  Preparing dinner is something I don't do often, because cutting my thumb -- or any other finger -- is not a rare occurrence with me.  I quickly washed it off and got a Band-Aid.  Mr. Awesomeness decided this was the point where he needed to step in and take over the cooking duties (seriously, works like a charm every time ladies) and I left the kitchen to nurse my life-threatening wound.

Never fear, though, DoctorDottie came to my rescue!

Dottie: Hold still, Mama.  Hold still.
Awesomeness: What do you need?
Dottie: You need to hold still.  You hurt yourself.  You need to stop moving.
Awesomeness: (actually holding still -- and I thought Mr. A was a sucker) Okay, I'm holding still.  Now what?
Dottie: *poke*

Poked me right in my damn wound.  Yeah.  Cleared it right up.  Thanks Doc.

Can A Mama Get A Table Dance?

I'm not sure what the deal is with ClimbyCody, but lately I can't keep him off of the tops of the furniture.  It started a couple of months ago with the couches.  He has this odd fascination with needing to climb over the backs.  Well, I assume the climbing is his fascination and not the skull-cracking that may result from it.  Who knows what happens in a baby's head.

Lately, his obsession has been with climbing on the dining set I got for the kids.  It's a 2 ft. high table with wooden kid chairs.  The one seen here:

He uses the chair to climb up onto the table.  Then he gets all scared because he's not sure how to get back down.  It's funnier when he gets stuck on the chair.  He shrieks like a housewife desperately escaping a mouse. Now, we're having to store the chair in our playpen when not in use.

It's not limited to the kids' table though.  See the corner of that coffee table.  He'll dance on that for me too.

Much Better!

A couple of weeks ago, GracelessGretta fell down and scraped her elbow at school.  I was upset about it because none of the teachers noticed this.  Half her damn elbow is missing skin and no one sees this?  I complained to the owner.

In true 3-year old fashion, she refused to keep a band-aid on it.  In true dirty-kid-wound fashion, the damn thing got infected and developed a pus pocket.  Mr. Awesomeness was left with the honors of pinning her down to clean that out.  Hurk!

It's finally healed (thanks StaphAseptic!) but now she's done a 180 with her stance on band aids.  Now she Must. Have. One.  Not only have we created a band aid monster, but now she wants all of her boo-boos kissed. 

Much better!  Thank you!

She even wants us to kiss the ones on her tushie.  (No, we don't kiss her butt.)

She also clutches her arm protectively whenever her Dada approaches her now.  Yikes!  It doesn't help that I giggle at this...  She clasps her little hand over her elbow owie and asks him in this little pitiful voice, "Is it much better?"  He has to reassure her every day that it, in fact, is much better.

Hope that blows over soon.